Film Review and Random thoughts

So last night I wastched Dark Water. For some reason I went into the movie expecting it to be good. The past few years as some Japaneese horror films most notably The Ring and others were remade into American versions I have been pleasantly suprised by all. These remakes seem to thrive on slower moving atmospheric stories for lack of a better description. They seem to be more character driven. Dark Water definately fit that bill.

Horror movies do not make me jump out of my seat anymore. For some reason I don't get scared by them anymore. I wish that I did from time to time. There are times that I do get goosebumps if the story is coming together well and scene is well done. Sometimes those goosebumps will be acoompinied by a smile and a thought, "Damn, that was well done." Dark Water definately has one of those moments in the final 10 minutes for me.

In Roger Ebert's Review he makes a good point, and states it much better than I could. If I attend a horror film in which Jennifer Connelly and her daughter are trapped in the evil web of a malevolent apartment building, I do not expect Bergman; if the movie does what it can do as well as it can be done, then it has achieved perfection within its own terms. While I wouldn't say this movie was perfect it at least hit my expectations.

I have never seen anything by director Walter Salles before, which suprises me now that I notice his other films included highly praised Central Station and Motorcycle Diaries. I find it strange that he followed up such a ambitious project like Motorcycle Diaries with this, but that definately makes me curious to see his older work now. Thank God for Netflix. Overall, I'd reccomend Dark Water, not ground breaking, but certainly enjoyable.

And onto bigger matters....

Is it right to put the Pope after a multi paragraph ramble about a 3 star horror movie? He probably shoulda got bigger billing, or at least a picture. Anyway...

The Pope's first Encyclical was put out this week. He is writing on love and on human response to God's love. I've not read it in it's entirity yet. I will need to print it out soon. But first impressions leave me thinking that this is a beautiful writing. I, myself, never bought into the whole Benedict as God's Bulldog talk that was being tossed about in the aftermath of his being appointed as Pope. I wanted to give the guy a chance. And while I haven't followed everything as close as I should have, this writing gives me hope. I'll just end rambling this morning with a bit if a passage from the beginning that I loved....

Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time. It could hardly be otherwise, since its promise looks towards its definitive goal: love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed "ecstasy", not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: "Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it" (Lk 17:33), as Jesus says throughout the Gospels (cf. Mt 10:39; 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk 9:24; Jn 12:25). In these words, Jesus portrays his own path, which leads through the Cross to the Resurrection: the path of the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies, and in this way bears much fruit. Starting from the depths of his own sacrifice and of the love that reaches fulfilment therein, he also portrays in these words the essence of love and indeed of human life itself.